1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved mechanism for re-configuring resources and/or component settings of an access network site. In particular, the present invention relates to a method providing an improved re-configuration procedure for resources and/or component settings, such as antenna configurations and power amplifier settings of an access network element by means of a controller, e.g. a self-organizing network (SON) entity, in cellular communication systems, like 3GPP Long-Term Evolution (LTE).
For the purpose of the present invention to be described herein below, it should be noted that                an access network element or site may for example be any device by means of which a user may access a communication network; this implies mobile as well as non-mobile or fixed devices and networks, independent of the technology platform on which they are based; only as an example, it is noted that access network elements operated according to principles standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project 3GPP, and known for example as LTE-based network elements like an enhanced Node B (eNB), are suitable for being used in connection with the present invention;        when reference is made herein to a call or communication connection, this exemplifies only a general example of a connection of any content; content as used in the present invention is intended to mean data of at least one of audio data (e.g. speech), video data, image data, text data, and meta data descriptive of attributes of the audio, video, image and/or text data, any combination thereof or even, alternatively or additionally, other data such as, as a further example, program code of an application program to be accessed/downloaded;        method steps likely to be implemented as software code portions and being run using a processor at one of the entities described herein below are software code independent and can be specified using any known or future developed programming language;        method steps and/or devices likely to be implemented as hardware components at one of the entities are hardware independent and can be implemented using any known or future developed hardware technology or any hybrids of these, such as MOS, CMOS, BiCMOS, ECL, TTL, etc, using for example ASIC components or DSP components, as an example;        generally, any method step is suitable to be implemented as software or by hardware without changing the idea of the present invention;        devices or means can be implemented as individual devices or means, but this does not exclude that they are implemented in a distributed fashion throughout the system, as long as the functionality of the device is preserved.        
2. Related Prior Art
In the last years, an increasing extension of communication networks, e.g. of wire based communication networks, such as the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), or wireless communication networks, such as the cdma2000 (code division multiple access) system, cellular 3rd generation (3G) communication networks like the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), cellular 2nd generation (2G) communication networks like the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), the Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolutions (EDGE), or other wireless communication system, such as the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) or WiMax, took place all over the world. Various organizations, such as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and the like are working on standards for telecommunication network and access environments.
With the emergence of packet-based wireless broadband systems such as WiMAX, also other systems like the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is developed further to cope with increasing performance demands. As one example, the Long Term Evolution (LTE) of the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access and Radio Access Network is under development. Goals for the evolved system include support for improved system capacity and coverage, high peak data rates, low latency, reduced operating costs, multi-antenna support, flexible bandwidth operations and seamless integration with existing systems.
For future wireless networks, such as 3GPP Long-Term Evolution (LTE) based networks, it is tried to reduce total cost of ownership for the operators. For this purpose, for example, automated configuration and optimization procedures are developed.
Generally, a communication network and in particular a mobile communication network needs to be dimensioned for the peak traffic, i.e. for situations where the performance demand for transmission resources, number of subscribers, occupied bandwidth and the like is highest. On the other hand, during other times different to peak traffic times, resources such as air interface capacity remains unused. An example for this is a situation where the typical load in traffic has a peak during daytime and is very low during night. Further examples may include for example largely varying traffic load in public places, such as fairs, stations, etc., depending on exhibitions and operating hours.
One problem arising from this situation is unnecessary energy consumption. Even a 0% loaded base station or transmitter consumes still a considerable amount of the power, compared to a fully loaded one. The reason is that several elements therein require the same level of power, irrespective of the output power. Examples for such elements in a base station or the like are modulators, signal generators, D/A converters, filters, control circuitry etc.
Current approaches for solving this problem propose to switch off complete cells for energy savings reasons. However, this would have a severe impact on the coverage as well as on adjacent cells' load and coverage area. As a consequence thereof, it may be necessary to change power and antenna tilt in the adjacent cells.
Traditionally a fixed number of sectors are deployed on a base station site. Any change in sectorization is done manually by technicians replacing hardware and the corresponding manual updates in OAM (Operation, Administration and Maintenance) data bases. This requires a time consuming and also expensive work of personnel.
On the other hand, there is available or currently under development equipment providing higher order sectorization and antennas or antenna arrays with electronically adjustable azimuth half-power beamwidth. This is achieved, for example, by electronic beamforming, as described for example in 3G Americas, “Data Optimization—Coverage Enhancements To Improve Data Throughput Performance”. It is to be expected that such equipment will be increasingly used in future for access network elements of communication networks.